BMC Newsletter #42

To those who practice meditation and search for wisdom's way

The Yoga of Surrender

A year ago I opened the Blackstone Yoga/Meditation Center to share my practice with the people of Southside Virginia, and to explore what it means to lead a surrendered life in the modern world. Yoga and surrender are two sides of the same hand, but while yoga is seen as a method or means to an end, surrender can only happen now in this ever present moment. There are no paths to surrender.

So let me share some thoughts (which only point to surrender) about this practice—this way of life that I have become. What’s so beautiful about surrender is that the act of surrender IS beauty. And as Keats said in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know and earth, and all ye need to know.”

This line translates into the knowing that this moment—no matter what the mind is experiencing or judging—is beauty and truth. If my wife cuts her finger in the kitchen, and I feel the pain in my being and  rush to get a band-aid, this is the most important action and the only action when the mind is surrendered to what is. Truth is what is: the cutting of the finger, the compassion, the healing. Everything else is mind, thought, and abstractions—all unreal.

When the mind gets involved, you get blame, fault finding, advice, analysis, should and should not, guilt, anger, promises, and so on. The practice of surrender is to notice the movement of the mind, no matter how subtle. Noticing the mind is surrender because it is not the mind that is doing the noticing. Being mindful or noticing (without thought) is being present.

When the mind is surrendered, then there is only the cutting of the finger and the getting of the band-aid. That’s all there is, and that’s enough!

The practice of yoga as surrender is allowing this moment to be enough. You can’t image how liberating this practice is. The mind just can’t go there, no matter how hard it tries, because the mind can only operate in time. Surrender is always already now.

Surrender is no-mind. Surrender is just being here. And that is Beauty; That is Truth.

Thank you,
Ed
Om Peace
9/1/07
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